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Found 499 article(s) in category 'Financial Services'

VC: An American History. Tom Nicholas, 2019, Book, “A major exploration of venture financing, from its origins in the whaling industry to Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. VC tells the riveting story of how the industry arose from the United States’ long-running orientation toward entrepreneurship. Venture capital has been driven from the start by the pull of outsized returns through a skewed distribution of payoffs―a faith in low-probability but substantial financial rewards that rarely materialize. Whether the gamble is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the newest startup in Silicon Valley, VC is not just a model of finance that has proven difficult to replicate in other countries. It is a state of mind exemplified by an appetite for risk-taking, a bold spirit of adventure, and an unbridled quest for improbable wealth through investment in innovation.” Link

Fretting about Modest Risks Is a Mistake. Matthew Rabin, Max Bazerman, April 29, 2019, “Managers often engage in risk-averse behavior, and economists, decision analysts, and managers treat risk aversion as a preference. In many cases, acting in a risk-averse manner is a mistake, but managers can correct this mistake with greater reflection. This article provides guidance on how individuals and organizations can move toward greater reflection and a more profitable aggregate portfolio of decisions. Inconsistency in risk preferences across decisions is a costly mistake for both individuals and for organizations.” Link

Dollar Dominance in Trade and Finance. Gita Gopinath, 2019, Book Chapter, “According to the major paradigm in international macroeconomics, namely the Mundell-Fleming paradigm (Mundell 1963; Fleming 1962), the importance of a country’s currency in international trade is tied closely to its share in world trade. This is because each country is assumed to export its goods in its own currency. That is, if we consider trade among the United States, India, and Japan, the assumption is that all exports from the United States are invoiced in dollars, all exports from Japan are invoiced in yen, and all exports from India are invoiced in rupees. Further, because the paradigm assumes that prices are sticky in the exporter’s currency, exchange rate fluctuations across countries affect their bilateral terms of trade, defined as the ratio of the at-the-dock price of imports to that of exports.” Link

Smart Development Banks. Ricardo Hausmann, 2019, Paper, “The conventional paradigm about development banks is that these institutions exist to target well-identified market failures. However, market failures are not directly observable and can only be ascertained with a suitable learning process. Hence, the question is how do the policymakers know what activities should be promoted, how do they learn about the obstacles to the creation of new activities? Rather than assuming that the government has arrived at the right list of market failures and uses development banks to close some well-identified market gaps, we suggest that development banks can be in charge of identifying these market failures through their loan-screening and lending activities to guide their operations and provide critical inputs for the design of productive development policies. In fact, they can also identify government failures that stand in the way of development and call for needed public inputs. This intelligence role of development banks is similar to the role that modern theories of financial intermediation assign to banks as institutions with a comparative advantage in producing and processing information. However, while private banks focus on information on private returns, development banks would potentially produce and organize information about social returns.” Link

Prices or Quantities Can Dominate Banking and Borrowing. Martin Weitzman, March 10, 2019, Paper, “The possibility of intertemporal banking and borrowing of tradeable permits is often viewed as tilting the various policy debates about optimal pollution control instruments toward favoring such time‐flexible quantities. The present paper shows that this view can be misleading, at least for the simplest dynamic extension of the original “prices vs. quantities” information structure. The model of this paper allows the firms to know and act upon the realization of uncertain future costs two full periods ahead of the regulators. For any given circumstance, the paper shows that either a fixed price or a fixed quantity is superior in expected welfare to time‐flexible banking and borrowing. Furthermore, the standard original formula for the comparative advantage of prices over quantities contains sufficient information to completely characterize the regulatory role of intertemporal banking and borrowing. The logic and implications of these results are analyzed and discussed.” Link

Risky Retirement Business. Carmen Reinhart, February 26, 2019, Opinion, “Regardless of whether yields in advanced economies rise, fall, or stay the same, core demographic trends are unlikely to change in the coming years, implying that pension costs will continue to balloon. Is there an asset class that can provide yield-hungry pension-fund managers what they’re looking for?” Link

The SEC’s Misguided Attack on Shareholder Arbitration. Hal Scott, February 22, 2019, Opinion, “Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced earlier this month that the staff of his agency would allow Johnson & Johnson to block its shareholders from voting on an amendment to its own bylaws. I submitted that amendment as trustee of a trust that owns J&J shares.” Link

Dollar Dominance in Trade: Facts and Implications. Gita Gopinath, 2019, Opinion, “It is an honor to give the EXIM Bank of India’s 33rd Commencement Day Lecture. I would like to especially thank the Managing Director, Mr. David Rasquinha, for inviting me to speak at this special event. Given that this is the EXIM Bank lecture it feels appropriate to talk about international trade. The remarkable growth in international trade and finance over the last four decades has changed economics and politics. The global financial crisis over the last decade has challenged several of the existing paradigms in economics. In my lecture today I will speak about one such long-standing paradigm in international economics, the so-called “Mundell-Fleming paradigm,”and the recent evidence that questions the general validity of this framework. This new evidence arises from work I have done over the last decade with co-authors that has led us to push for a new paradigm that we call the “Dominant Currency Paradigm.”” Link

The next financial crisis may come soon – are we all that safe? Kenneth Rogoff, February 5, 2019, Opinion, “A decade on from the 2008 global financial crisis, policymakers constantly assure us that the system is much safer today. The giant banks at the core of the meltdown have scaled back their risky bets, and everyone – investors, consumers, and central bankers – is still on high alert. Regulators have worked hard to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the banking industry. But are we really all that safe?” Link

Communicating Resource Scarcity. Ashley Whillans, Michael Norton, 2019, Paper, “The development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships require investments of both money and time—resources that are often limited in supply, but in great demand. Indeed, consumers are regularly asked to dedicate their money and time to social engagements, and need to manage these resources efficiently. Therefore, consumers often choose to cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. But how does using the excuse of financial versus time scarcity influence interpersonal relationships? Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that using financial scarcity as an excuse (e.g., “I don’t have money”) increases perceptions of interpersonal closeness and helping behavior compared to using time scarcity as an excuse (e.g., “I don’t have time”). This effect is explained by the fact that time is perceived as a more personally controllable resource than money, resulting in consumers who cite financial (vs. temporal) constraints as being perceived as more trustworthy.” Link

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